Recently, I was in a group when the discussion turned to one’s favorite
dish. A woman talked about her favorite preparation: smashed potatoes.
I had never heard of it. Surely she meant “mashed potatoes”, I thought,
though the mental image of a chef smashing potatoes with a hammer was
funny.

Later, I googled the term and learned that there is a real dish named
smashed potatoes. Tells you how much I know. Smashed potatoes and mashed
potatoes are two different beasts. They have about as much in common
as pomme and pomme de terre.

What a difference a letter makes. The same is true for the words this week.
You can add an initial letter to them to turn them into a completely
different word.

ovine

PRONUNCIATION:

(O-vyn)

MEANING:

adjective: Of, relating to, or resembling, sheep.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin ovis (sheep). Ultimately from the Indo-European root owi-
(sheep), which also gave us ewe. Earliest documented use: 1676.

USAGE:

“George Bernard Shaw said that the English ‘worship their great artists
indiscriminately and abjectly’ and described this phenomenon -- the
uncritical ovine devotion to Shakespeare -- as ‘Bardolatry’.”
James Gingell; Rejecting the Cult of Bardolatry Does Not Make You
a Philistine; The Guardian (London, UK); May 20, 2016.